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Resources for Communication Problems

Monday, March 10, 2008

LBT271-273凡鈞

LBT271-273凡鈞

Ⅰ.The problem

In an earlier chapter ____ have discussed language development with respect to age and onset. Now we must search for regularities within stages of development as well as regularities in the strategy of language acquisition regardless of the age at which this happens.

在前幾章討論discussed language development with respect to age and onset關於語言發展的年齡與起始,現在我們we must search for探討regularities within stages of development發展的規律與語言習得的規律階段, as well as regularities in the strategy of language acquisitionregardless of the age at which this happens而非發生的年齡

Our language is such an intimate aspect of our thoughts and behavior that it is difficult for us to obtain an objective appreciation of its mechanisms. The common description of its structure is a woeful oversimplification.

我們的語言是such an intimate aspect of our thoughts and behavior that一個提示我們想法與行為的觀點,這讓我們很難獲得an objective appreciation of its mechanisms客觀的結構評價。一般結構的描述過餘簡化是令人遺憾的。

“Language consists of elemental units, that is, speech-sounds ; these are joined together into morphemes or words ; and words are put together into sentences. Speech-sounds have no meaning, but words do. They acquire meanings by an associative process in which the visual image of an object is linked to the sound of a word,”

語言由最小單位組成,即是,語音, these are joined together into這包含了morphemes or words音素或字,而字的組成又形成句子,語音並沒有意義,但是words do字有。他們的意義是藉由by an associative process客觀的連結視覺影像is linked to與字的聲音所產生。

The attractive simplicity of statements such as these has prevented many students of human behavior from recognizing the deep problems posed by the true structure of language and by the infant’s amazing ability to acquire these skills within two years time. A few examples may help to show some of the hidden problems.

The attractive simplicity of statements such as these這簡單的說has prevented…A...from就像是預防A= students of human behavior被認為有語言結構嚴重問題的學生recognizing the deep problems posed by B1+B2(B1 = true structure of language)以及B2 = infant’s amazing ability to acquire these skills within two years time嬰兒在2歲內獲得語言令人吃驚的能力, A few examples may help在一些例子可以幫助to show some of the hidden problems.隱藏的問題。

Let us look first at phonological aspects. Suppose we build a typewriter that could print out (for instance, in international phonetic alphabet) anything that is spoken into it, hopefully in any language. What are the tasks of this machine ? In order for it to be successful it would have to be capable of a highly peculiar form of pattern recognition. For instance, it is not enough that it can recognize isolated examples of English speech sounds. The acoustic peculiarities of a given phoneme are never twice the same, and there are instances in which two acoustically very different sounds represent the same phoneme. Interpretation of a sound as one or another phoneme often depends on the acoustic context. Furthermore , phonemes are not simply linked as in a chain during production, but they affect each other , and the influence may work both ways : a later phoneme may be influenced by an earlier one or, because of anticipation, an earlier phoneme may be influenced by a later by later one. Acoustic analysis also show that speech sounds, instead of neatly following one another, may actually overlap either partly or wholly; by giving a vowel /o/ an/R/ coloring, or nasalizing it, or palatalizing it, an R-, η-, or y-quality is produced together with the vowel, but it may be interpreted, under certain conditions, as if it were following it. In addition, every speaker influences his utterances by idiosyncrasies due to the peculiar shape of his vocal tract and the peculiarities of his own motor-skills; this means that every utterance he produces undergoes acoustic transformations.

A machine that prints a graphic symbol for every acoustic feature heard in the sounds of any language would produce very unreadable records. Speech-recognition of a natural language involves focusing attention on specific types of phonetic relations or contrasts, and on ignoring many other acoustic phenomena as irrelevant for transmission of information in a particular language. Every natural language selects its own set of contrasts, and recognition of the sound patterns of one language is governed by its own peculiar set of rules. (Although all such sets of rules have common formal properties; see Chapter 9 and Chomsky’s Appendix A.) In order to be useful, the typewriter would have to be able to select the right set of rules for every input, in other words, it would have to be able to recognize one of several natural languages and then behave in accordance with this selection. Clearly, pattern-recognition of an acoustically operated typewriter is dependent upon rules which must take into consideration many factor and which must operate on much longer sound configurations than single or short speech sound segments. The relational patterns, even on the level of speech sounds, are very intricate. The reason why the many attempts to build such a typewriter have not been successful(except for very limited input) is probably not entirely due to technical limitations; it may be because of our ignorance of the proper rules that regulate speech perception.

Suppose we had solved all of these problems and had succeeded in constructing a typewriter that at least transcribes English. The device could not be considered a model of an infant who is developing speech. The problems to be solved by the infant whose task it is to “crack” the society’s communication code are much more complicated; he is biologically constituted to learn to recognize any type of natural language, and the acoustic input is usually not limited to one narrow topic.

When the intricacies of patterns and relations in the structure of language are discussed abstractly, it is often interjected that the child’s task might be simplified because he does not learn an abstract or formal system but is learning meanings at the same time, and this might facilitate the situation. Let us look into this more closely.

First, it is necessary to make a distinction between reference and meaning. Reference deals with the relationship between an individual word and some aspect or object of the physical environment. The problem of reference need not be considered here as they constituted the subject matter of Chapter 8. Meaning deals with the semantic interpretation of utterances (or written material), and these come invariably in the form of sentences in various states of completion or degrees of imperfection; this includes the special case of one-word sentences which we shall discuss presently. Because discourse is not encountered in anything but the essential form of sentences, and sentences can be interpreted only through grammatical analysis, meaning cannot be divorced form grammatical structure (Chomsky, 1957; Chomsky and Miller, 1963; Miller and Chomsky. 1963 )

來說明,意味不能分開文法的形式語法架構(瓊姆斯基,1957;瓊姆斯基與米勒,1963;米勒與瓊姆斯基,1963)

Grammatical structure an not be understood as a phenomenon of transitional probability of specific lexical items or parts of speech. Something more intricate must be involved as may be seen from the following examples, suggested mostly by Chomsky. Consider the following strings of words: